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351 




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76 



OUR KNOWLEDGE 



ialifoi'ttia and the §mth-mksi ®oast 



OXE HUNDllED YEARS SIXCE. 



flENRY A. '^IHOMES, a.m 

/"■■ ■ Librarian, N. Y. State Library. 



i^-V-' 




Glass FM1_ 

Book__Jil^ 



(J>r ^CuJLaJ 



OUR KNOWLEDGE 



Olfllif 0im» mi \\u Umi\-%^t%\ ^u%i 



ONE HUNDRED YEARS SINCE. 



KEAD BEFORE 



THE ALBANY IE"ST1TUTE, 



FJSBUUAllY 15, ISrO, 



HENRY A. HOMES, a.m., 

Librarian, N. Y. State Library. 




J 



ALBANY, N. Y. : 
JOEL MUNSELL 

1870. 



fflialifavnia iuul t\xt Moxilx-wt^t tfaa^t. 



Our familiarity of late years with the geography, the 
products and the increasing population of the "Western 
empire of the United States on the shores of the Pacific, 
makes the reflection seem the more astonishing that a cen- 
tury since, this coast was unknown and had hardly been 
touched by the foot of an European. 

It is evident from the history of geographical discovery 
that a century since, California, Oregon, Washington ter- 
ritory and British Columbia were both in their coasts and 
their interior almost absolutely unknown. At that time 
the name of California was given to all the coast that 
stretched north of the peninsula on the maps. More than 
two hundred and eighty years had elapsed from the date 
of the discovery of America, from 1492 to 1769, before 
the mere outline of its north-west coast had been traced 
by Europeans. From the date of the discovery of Mon- 
terey, latitude 36° 40', and of Cape Blanc in latitude 
43°, by Sebastien Yiscayno (Biscaien) in 1602, for a period 
of one hundred and sixty years, not a new point was made 
on these west coasts of America, until the year 1775. 
Even Viscayno had gone no farther north than Cabrillo in 
1542. 

When we remember that Lower California had been 
discovered in 1535, by the same commander, Cortes, who 
had conquered Mexico, it certainly becomes extraordinary 
that a coast directly continuous with California, remained 
still unknown, two hundred and thirty -five years afterwards. 



4 California and the North-icesi Coast. 

It can hardly be said that the question was settled in the 
minds of geographers previous to 1764, whether Califor- 
nia was an island or a peninsula. Purchas ui)on his map 
of 1625, has engraved, " California was formerly supposed 
to be a part of the continent, but now is known to be an 
island," and he carries it up above the latitude of 43°, 
making it, as did many geographers, 1,700 leagues long. 
Many maps in the New York State Library, of as late 
date as 1741, represent it as an island, as those of Overton, 
Tillemon, DeFer and others, and they extend California up 
to latitude 45°, including New Albion. Giustiniani's atlas 
of 1755, makes California an island reaching to latitude 47°. 
Engel in 1764, tries to prove that it is not true that Cali- 
fornia, owing to the winds and tides, is sometimes apeninsula 
and at other times an island. 

One hundred years since, the only coast of the conti- 
ents of the world that had not l)een delineated with more 
or less completeness, excepting in the Arctic and Antarctic 
regions, was tliat of the north-west coast of America from 
lat. 35° to 80°. 

The Russians under Behring in 1728 and Tchirikow in 
1741 in successive voyages, had discovered points of land 
in America, and on the archipelagos of islands. Behring 
had discovered the strait that bears his name, but the dis- 
coverers were still ignorant whether what we now call 
Alaska belonged to America, and whether the lands which 
they had discovered were islands, a new continent, or the 
main land of America. As late as 1754 it was denied that 
Alaska was part of our continent. (Letter of a Russian 
officer, Dobbs). Bellin on a map of 1755 observes, " not 
known whether the Russian discoveries are islands or con- 
tinents, as they did not touch land." 

The observations of Sir Francis Drake in 1578 added no 
knowledge of regions north of 43°, but he gave a name to 
a portion of the coast which he saw from the deck of his 



California and the North-west Coast. 5 

ship south of that latitude, calling it New Albion, and 
entered a port in latitude 38°, north of San Francisco. 
Cabrillo had discovered this coast before him in 1542 under 
the orders of Gov. Mendoza. Finally came Viscayno's 
voyage in 1602-3, and all discovery ceased for one hundred 
and sixty-five years, when the Spainards in 1769 redis- 
covered Monterey. 

This ignorance of the western coast is strongly affirmed 
by the geographer Delisle, in 1755. He observes : 

" The part of the southern or Pacific ocean to the north 
between Japan and California at present unknown is three 
thousand and six hundred miles wide." {Hist. Ab., p. 11) 
Dobbs, in his account of Hudson's bay (1744) says, "I do 
not find that any countries have been discovered by Euro- 
peans in all that great tract between California and Japan 
from the latitude of 38° to the Arctic circle." 

And in the same sentiment, Henry Ellis, writing the 
preface in 1748 to the voyage of the ships Dobbs and'cali- 
forniasays: "there lies a tract of country making part 
of America from the Welcome or Ne Ultra to cape Blanco 
in California, that is, from lat. 65° to 43° north, taking in 
22 degrees of latitude and no less than thirty in longitude, 
having an extent of coast upwards of six hundred leagues' 
the coast of which wholly and the interior parts of tt in 
a great measure remain unknown." And we see how 
mistaken he was in his suppositions as to the extent of 
this ignorance, seeing that the continent stretches west 
more than sixty degrees of longitude instead of thirty as 
he supposed. Dobbs drew his map four years before, run- 
ning an imaginary coast, starting from Hudson's bay lati- ' 
tude 63° and from longitude 95° directly south-west to Cape 
Blanco on the Pacific in longitude 35°, leaving room or 
space between America and Asia for a continent larger 
than New Holland, which new continent would on bis 
theory embrace the Russian discoveries of 1741. 



6 California and the North-west Coast. 

The reasons tor the neglect to make voyages of dis- 
covery to complete the coast outline of the new world, 
are not difficult to be found, notwithstanding each new 
discovery had excited the admiration and had been a 
source of wealth to the old world. The principal reasons 
are the following: 

First: Spain, the only nation having territory on the 
south seas or Pacific, was satisfied with the abundant flow 
of wealth from her mines, and with annually dispatching 
ships laden with silver from Acapulco for the East India 
trade at the Philippines. These ships almost invariably 
followed the same route, sailing on the same lines of 
latitude, rarely north of 15°. And they feared that the 
extension and spread of the news of discoveries would 
create for themselves, rivals in trade among the other 
powers of Europe. 

Second : The vessels of other powers that entered the 
Pacific, went as buccaneers or privateers or for trade, and 
not for purposes of discovery; such were the voyages of 
Drake, Cavendish, Shelvocke, Van Noort and Spilbergen 
and the successful one of Anson in 1743. They were satis- 
fied in case they could fall upon the Spanish galleons 
laden with silver. Anson watched more than a year for 
the one which he captured with over a million and a half 
of dollars. 

Third: After the discovery of the passage around Cape 
Horn which was mainly favorable to the Spaniards and 
Portuguese, the English and Dutch flattered themselves 
with the hope of becoming most eft'ectually their rivals, 
by a northern passage either to the west or east. They 
were especially sanguine of securing a passage by the 
west, on account of the universal persuasion that the new 
continent was narrow in its northern parts; and they de- 
voted themselves for centuries to securing a passage 
through Baffin's or Hudson's bays. As late as 1748, the 



California and the North-west Coast. 7 

* 
English were butting their ships against the ice in the 

western inlets of Hudson's bay, believing that they should 
come out into the vast Pacific due west or south-west, 
where we now find land stretching over fifty degrees of 
longitude. The name chosen for the ship of 1749, the 
California., indicates the region where the explorers hoped 
to emerge. So well convinced was the British govern- 
ment that the passage was through Hudson's bay, that 
Gov. Dobbs secured, at this late period, that ^20,000 should 
be voted to the one who should discover a passage through 
Hudson's bay to the Pacific. 

While master Briggs, as mentioned in Purchas (III, p. 
851), was making use of the argument of the narrowness 
of the continent as a reason why the English should per- 
sist in making voyages by the north, the Spaniards at a 
very early period got out maps, on v^hich the coast went 
steadily north-west by west from California for eighty de- 
grees of longitude to the fifty-fifth degree of latitude, for 
the purpose one would think of discouraging their rivals 
from the attempts they were making. This fact appears 
plainly from the current maps which were published dur- 
ing the seventeenth century. 

Fourth: The English trading companies and those of 
other nations concealed their own acquired knowledge of 
the country, and discouraged rather than stimulated all at- 
tempts at discovery, except what they made for themselves, 
so as to secure the monopoly of the trade in furs. That 
this allegation is true is manifest from the writings of 
Dobbs, Middleton, Ellis, Barrow and others. 

Thus much we state concisely as the reasons for the 
long continued ignorance of the north-west coast. 

I will now proceed to illustrate this ignorance and the 
extent to which credulity and speculation took the place 
of information, only a hundred years since, by exhibitino- 



8 California and the North-west Coast. 

it 

the geographical views of Delisle, in 1752, and ofEngeliu 
1765. 

Joseph Nicolas Delisle, a member of the French Aca- 
demy, and distinguished as a geographer, had for 22 years 
lived at St. Petersburg as Astronomer of the government, 
and had accompanied the Russian expedition of 1741 which 
discovered the land which we now cull Alaska. His elder 
brother. First Geographer of the king of France, was called 
tbe " creator of modern geography," and died in 1720. In 
1750 Joseph Delisle presented to the French Academy a 
memoir illustrated with maps to explain after his rich ex- 
perience, his views of the geography of North-Western 
America. Several editions of it were published.^ On these, 
maps, copies of which are in the State Library, he has 
drawn: First, a sea of the west, within the interior of the 
continent, six hundred leagues in circumference, having 
on its shores the great city of Quivira, and communicat- 
ing with the Pacific ocean at two points. Second and 
third, two series of straits and lakes stretching towards 
Hudson's and Bathu's bays from the Pacific, running north- 
east by east. Fourth, the straits of Anian, communicating 
with the Arctic ocean. 

Delisle and his associate Buache, another distinguished 
geographer of that day, defend this map, by arguments 
which they thought convincing, during the four or five 
following years. 

The first novelty, the Sea of the West, he was led to be- 
lieve in from an account to be found only in Purchas 
His Pilgrimes (HI, 849), which was from the pen of one 



* Nouvelles cartes des clecouvertcs de rAiniral De Fonte, et antres naviga- 
teurs Espagnols, Portugais, Anglois, Hollandois, Francois ot Russes dans les 
mors septcntriouales, avcc luur explication. Par M. De Lisle. A Paris, 175:3, 

4to. 

Considerations geo<frai)lii(iues et physiques sur les nouvelles decouvertes 

Nord do la grande mer du Sud, avec des cartes . . .Pai' P. Buache. A 

Paris, 1753. 4to. 



California and the North-west Coast. 9 

Michael Locke, being what a Greek pilot, Jean De Fuca, 
told him at Venice in the year 1596, De Fuca told Locke 
that when he was in the Spanish employment in the Pacific 
Ocean in the years 1592-3, he entered into the North or 
Arctic sea through certain straits very near those we are 
now agreed to call Juan De Fuca's straits, and found him- 
self in this Sea of the West, the size of which he gave 
very indefinitely, 

Delisle's brother had left manuscript maps of Western 
America with this sea, stretching over 30 degrees of longi- 
tude, which he had drawn in 1697, but did not publish till 
1718, out of regard to the interests of France in Canada. 
It was these maps which had led Joseph Delisle to re- 
study the subject. They both believed that Hudson's bay 
could be entered from this sea. Although De Fuca is now 
generally regarded as a fabulist, still his Western sea re- 
mained on maps up to at least as late as 1780. Tytler 
says " the whole voyage of De Fuca rests upon apocryphal 
authority," 

Notwithstanding this is the belief at present, still after 
the discovery of a strait near where De Fuca had assigned 
one, his name became afiixed to it. Delisle made a most 
thorough study of the existence of this sea of the west, 
his investigations into all travels and voyages w^ere most 
minute and he attempted a most painful adjustment of it 
with all other discoveries, both pretended and real. What 
acuteness of judgment would have been ascribed to him, if 
his elaborate reasonings, instead of having been confuted 
with the lapse of time, had been authenticated. He had 
studied Marquette, Hennepin, the Jesuit relations of New 
France, and every available source of information. The 
southern strait of entrance, Delisle derived from an account 
in Viscayno's voyage of an entrance into thissea in latitude 
43°, Coxe in his Carolana (1699) had said that he had dis- 
covered a west sea several thousand miles in circumference. 



10 California and the North-west Coast. 

The second and third of these novelties the straits we 
have mentioned running N.N.E, were mapped out by 
Delisle from the descriptions contained in a printed account 
in English of a voyage by a Spanish admiral in 1640. 
This account had lirst been published in 1708, in a peri- 
odical called the 31onihlij Miscellavij, or Memoirs for the 
Carious. Admiral De Fonte in this narration tells his 
own story : He narrates that in the year 1647 he sailed 
from Callao in Peru, accompanied by Capt. Bernardo in 
a second ship, under orders to intercept ships from Boston 
in N.E., which Avere in search of a north-west passage, 
and that at latitude 53°, Bernardo left time and traced 
the coast still farther north. Bernardo in latitude 61° as- 
cended a river to 79°, whence one of his men went near to 
the head of Davis's strait and found there was no passage 
by water. When he rejoined De Fonte, the latter had re- 
turned from his extraordinary voyage through straits and 
lakes to the town of Conasset: where leaving his ship, 
and ascending a river near Hudson's bay, he came to a 
ship from Boston, Capt. Shapley, and conversed with him 
and its owner, Mr. Seymour Gibbons, This ship was trad- 
ing for skins in a port of Hudson's bay.* The Admiral's 
conclusions were that there was no water communication 
to either of these bays, and he returned home with this 
report. This Boston ship must have left Boston within 
ten years from the founding of the Massachusetts colony. 
The names af Shapley and Gibbons were Boston names. 

This alleged voyage of De Fonte in 1640 was so well 
accredited, thatDobbs made it the basis of an argument in 
1744 to the British government for the certainty of a passage 
west through Hudson's bay : Ellis sustained it in 1748, 



' This voyage from Boston is not the only one spoken of from independent 
authority ; for at about the same period, (Ellis p. 71) Jeremie speaks of an- 
oth(ir ship's crew from Boston having been met witli, wIkdu some inferred 
might liave been tliose spoiien of by De Fonte. 



California and the North-west Coast. 11 

and. it was extensivel}'' believed in England up to 1776. 
Delisle's maps of 1750-55 were constructed on the theory 
of the voyage having been a reality. Lacroix in 1773 de- 
fends the truth of the account. As late as 1792, the 
Spaniards sent a ship to discover the Rio del Reys, the only 
authority for which was De Fonte's voj-age. 

While the credit which was given to this voyage of De 
Fonte by leading French and English geographers may 
astonish us, we must remember the intensity of interest by 
which it was stimulated, the desire to find a rapid, pas- 
sage to India by a northern route. On further investi- 
gations, pursued by a rival French geographer, Robert De 
Vaugondy and others,^ it was pretty clearly established 
that although there were De Fontes or De Fuentes in 
Chili and Peru, yet there never was a Spanish or Portu- 
guese admiral of the name of De Fonte, and that the re- 
cords of Mexico and Spain contained no account of a similar 
voyage having ever been performed at any period. It was 
further established that there was no Spanish original manu- 
script, and that the account of the voyage in the English 
magazine of 1708 was a jeu d'esprit of the editor, Mr. Pe- 
tiver, who was disposed to write a moon story on the most 
interesting theme of the day, i. e., the remaining undis- 
covered limits of the New World. And perhaps he hoped 
by showing from pretended Spanish sources almost the cer- 
tainty of water communication from Hudson's bay to the 
Pacific, notwithstanding the Spaniards aflirmed that there 
was no passage, to induce farther voyages to Hudson's 
bay for exploration. 

The fourth of the geographical legends sustained by De- 
lisle and Buache in their maps was the traditional straits 



^Observations critiques sur les nouvelles decouvertes de I'Admiral De La 
Fiiente. Par M. Robert de Vangoiidy, fils., Geog. ordinaire du Roi. Paris, 
1753. 12°. 



12 California and the JS'orth-iccst Coast. 

of Aniaii. It ■was a strait believed to be a passage by tlie 
north from east to west, coniinencing in from fifty-live to 
sixty degrees of latitude. Cortereal bad named it in the 
year 1500 : Ladrillero in 1504, M. Cliack in 1579, and 
Maldonado in 1598, all pretended to have entered those 
straits. Maldonado says that he sailed through it and 
back again. De Fuca thought his straits were those of 
Anian. Viscayno had been sent in 1602 to discover them. 
Drake said that he had discovered them. Maldonado's 
account which was the most detailed turned out to be sheer 
invention. Even after Behring's straits had been disco- 
vered, (Alaska being supposed to be an island and our 
continent narrow on the north), the straits of Anian were 
still searched for : and it was inferred that Bernardo's orDe 
Fonte's straits must be those of Anian. The discoveries 
of the Russians were supposed to confirm the statements of 
De Fonte. And even after the discoveries of Capt. Cook, 
and as late as 1791, the straits of Anian were sought for 
by the Spaniards under Malaspina. 

Torquemada in his Monarquia Indiana (liv. v, cap. 45), 
says that Philip II of Spain had determined to discover 
the coasts of California, because certain foreigners had 
reported that they had passed by the north-west passage to 
the South sea by the straits of Anian, where the}' had seen 
a great town, and therefore Viscayno was sent on the 
enterprise. 

The final conclusion must be, tliat although we have in 
Behring's straits, that which responds to the idea of a water 
communication to the Arctic ocean, yet that all the pre- 
tended straits of Anian, were delusions of navigators or 
inventions of others. 

Ten years after Delisle, in 1765, only one hundred and five 
years since, Eiigel, the Swiss geographer, published a volume 
containing his studies on Western geography, accompanied 



California and the North-west Coast. 13 

with maps, upon which were delineated his ideas of the 
mountains and rivers of the interior and of tlie coast. ^ He 
rejected the notion of the truth of De Foute's voyage, of the 
sea of the west, and of De Fuca's strait, and preferred 
generally the data given in the Spanish maps of the earliest 
period. These, the Dutch and English geographers had, 
with good reason, little by little disregarded in their maps, 
or had given undue preference to the account of some one 
of the navigators. In accordance with his theory, Engel 
between 35 and 40° of latitude stretches our west- 
ern coast through 25° of longitude to the west, instead 
of less than five, as is the real fact ; and draws five 
rivers running due west to the Pacific from the interior, 
between 36 and 48° north latitude, one of them flowing 
over 50 degrees of longitude. 

The results of Engel's studies, when compared with our 
present knowledge, show that as little value was to be 
attached to the Spanish maps as to his own speculations. 
They were all alike constructed from unreliable data as 
regards the north-west coast in almost every particular. 

Maps published in London as late as 1775, (Sayer & 
Bennett's), adopt Engel's views in part, and a river is re- 
presented as flowing into the Pacific in latitude 45° due 
west, out of Lake Winnipeg. These maps trace some- 
times an imaginary north-west coast, but only refer to De 
Fonte, De Fuca, Chinese or Japanese maps for their au- 
thority. Some maps of this date treat the coast as unknown 
north of 43°, and leave an absolute blank from that point. 

We have thus followed the discoveries of the N'orth 
West coast up to one hundred years since. And one hun- 
dred years since commenced the re-discovery by the Span- 
iards of Upper California. An ecclesiastico-military expe- 



'Memoires et Observations geographiques et critiques siir la situation 
des pays septentrionaux clel'Asie et de rAmerique. Lausanne, 1765. 4to. 



14 California and the North-west Coast. 

dition came by land from Lower California, and established 
itself at San Diego on the first day of July, 1769, making 
the first historic day for California, Monterey was re-dis- 
covered May 31, 1770, not having been seen since 1603 by 
Viscayno. San Francisco was re-discovered by land, in 
1770, made a mission in 1775, and a presidio in 177G. The 
harbor was entered by water for the first time in 1775 
(Randolph, p. 22, 33). These proceedings caused great 
rejoicings and ringing of bells in the city of Mexico, and 
at Madrid. 

The final general outline of our ISTorth-West coast was 
not made till ninety years since, in Capt. Cook's great but 
fatal third voyage. From Drake's time to Cook, no English 
flag had gone north of 43°. Simultaneously with our 
revolutionar}' war, under instructions from the Admiralty 
to. survey that coast for the purpose of finding a northern 
passage to the east, and to discover the limits of the con- 
tinent. Cook left Plymouth in July, 1776, and reached lat. 
44° 33' in March, 1778. It is not impossible that the 
ideas prevalent during the twenty-five preceding years, 
both of the narrowness of the continent and of numerous 
channels and rivers from the west, led the British govern- 
ment to surmise that their rebellious colonists might with 
advantage be attacked from the rear as well as the front, 
or at least might be prevented from settling remote from 
her vengeance. 

After Cookreached ISTew Albion, the outline of the coast, 
as high as latitude 70°, was for the first time seen by a 
European, and surveyed with an accuracy that with the 
instruments of former navigators would not have been 
possible. " He effected more in a single season than the 
Spaniards had accomplished in two centuries, though he 
passed De Fuca's straits witiiout seeing them." D'Urville, 
the French navigator, deehircs that he was the founder of 



California and the North-west Coast. 15 

the true geography of the Pacific ocean : and to him we 
are indebted for the destruction of the geographical fictions 
so readily embraced by many preceding geographers. 

While Cook was preparing for his voyage, the viceroy 
of New Spain sent out an expedition for the same purpose 
under Bruno Heceta, Juan de Ayala and luan de la Bodega 
y Quadra, in 1775. The account of this expedition was 
written by Maurelle the pilot of one of the vessels. Mau- 
relle went as far north as 57°, and he obtained a tolerable 
outline of the coast to that point, and sent home a note of 
alarm regarding the progress of Russian settlement 
Maurelle had no better charts than the conjectural ones of 
the French, such as Bellin's of 1766, and he was on the 
look out for DeFonte's pretended straits, which were in full 
faith still retained upon those charts. In 1779, another 
Spanish expedition, accompanied also by Maurelle, and 
De la Bodega y Quadra, was sent over the same track, 
ajDparently unconscious that Cook had preceded them 
during 1778. This voyage went no farther north than 59°. 
In 1774 and 1755, Perez and Martinez, under the Span- 
ish flag, anchored at Nootka sound and sailed as far as 58°. 
The discoveries of Capt. Cook were not published until 
1784. They produced a great excitement in favor of free 
trade in furs, hitherto a monopoly of fur companies; and 
the rivalry lor this trade led to numerous voyages of ships 
of all nations. The most prominent of these were those 
of Portlock and Dixon in 1786 and 1787, chiefly for the 
purpose of trading in furs: when a detour for discovery 
was made, it was for the sake of finding new regions to 
buy furs of the natives. Dixon chronicles our still exist- 
ing ignorance of the continent by the observation, that " so 
imperfectly do we know the coast that it is in some mea- 
sure to be doubted whether we have yet seen the main 
land ; whether any land we have been near is really the 



16 California and the North-west Coast. 

continent, remains to be determined by future navigators." 
But lie adds " the fur trade is inexhaustible " 

Meares, a mercantile voyager, in 1786, was the first 
European who had wintered on the coast north of San 
Francisco, making it an event of historic importance. He 
Avas a believer in Ue Foute's and De Fuca's voyages as 
authentic. 

The next discoverer was, as was proper, an American, 
sailing under ship's papers given by the old Confederation 
in 1787. Capt. Crray, of Boston, on his second voyage, 
discovered the Columbia river, in 1792, and by right of 
discovery, then the law of nations, secured that outlet on 
the coast to the United States. He discovered Bulfinch's 
harbor, the only one for seven hundred miles, discovered 
Queen Charlotte's to be an island, and revealed De Fuca's 
straits to Vancouver, and for the first time carried the 
United States flag around the world. La Perouse had 
discovered the archipelago of Queen Charlotte's in 1786. 

Notwithstanding the discoveries of Capts. Cook and 
Gray, the results of the fabulous voyages of De Fonte, De 
Fuca and others were retained on maps till within eighty 
years, and they were not overthrown, and the veritable 
continent defined in its western limits until the memorable 
voyage of Vancouver was completed in 1794. 

Vancouver met with Capt. Gray on the coast to the 
great surprise of the former, and profited by the commu- 
nications made to him. He surveyed and defined Van- 
couver's island and its archipelago, and visited in all nine 
thousand miles of coast. 

It was only after the results of his discoveries were 
published that it could be said that we had a tolera- 
bly correct map of the north-west coast. And yet absurd 
as it may seem, as late as 1791, Vancouver was in the 
hope, according to his instructions, of finding a river by 



California and the North-west Coast. 17 

which he could reach the Lake of the Woods, which is in 
latitude 49° and longitude 95°, and writes of it as an im- 
portant fact he had substantiated that there was no navi- 
able passage to the east from latitude 30° to 5G°. Capt. 
Hendrick, an American, in 1789 went around Vancouver's 
island. 

While it is within eighty years since we have learned 
what is the coast outline of our continent, it is not till 
within a period less than half of that, that we have become 
acquainted with the outlines of its interior geography. 
The continent a hundred years since had never been tra- 
versed by a European, north of Mexico; nor in Mexico, 
north of the gulf of California. Delisle's map of 1785 has 
in an imnienae blank space the record: "the whole inte- 
rior is unknown." 

The plan of Jonathan Carver of Connecticut for cross- 
ing from ocean to ocean in 1772 had failed. His scheme 
was to have a military post established at the straits of 
Anian near Oregon. His map of 1778 contains a deline- 
ation of the sea of the west, the straits of Anian and of 
De Fuca, now fables of the past. 

John Ledyard, also of Connecticut, in 1786, persevered 
in a scheme, in which he was aided by Jefferson, to tra- 
verse the American continent by entering it from Russia; 
but was hindered from accomplishing it, owing to his im- 
prisonment by the Russians. 

Samuel Hearne of London, in 1772, by his journey of 
thirteen hundred miles from Fort Prince of Wales in lati- 
tude 60° to the Coppermine river, established the fact that 
the continent did not extend to the ITorth pole. 

Alexander McKenzie in his first journey westward in 
1789, reached only the Arctic ocean, but farther west 
than Hearne, to the river still called after his name as dis- 
coverer. In his second journey in 1793, he was the first 



18 California avd the North-west Coast. 

European to cross the continent on the north, and in its 
broadest part, latitude 52° 20'. He liad started also from 
the same fort on Hudson's bay, from which Ilearne had 
proceeded. The British had no trading or military posts 
west of the Rocky mountains previous to the year 1806. 

A map of Mexico of Humboldt's, bearing date of the year 
1811, designates the whole of the western territory of the 
United States as " unknown." 

In concluding this representation of our ignorance of 
California and the north-west coast until a comparatively 
very recent period, I will simply enumerate very briefly 
the prominent American exploring tours of the present 
century, by means of which this ignorance has been re- 
moved, and the country opened for settlement. 

It was not until 1804, the continuous chain of the Rocky 
mountains being as yet untraversed, and it still being 
possible that an inland sea existed larger than Lake Supe- 
rior, that the continent was traversed by explorers through 
the territory of the United States. The expedition of our 
government, for which so much credit is due to Jefferson, 
was commanded by Lewis and Clark, and went down the 
Columbia river to its mouth. Their full narrative was not 
published till 1814, and down to 1844 was the principal 
source of information regarding the interior. 

Major Zebulon Pike's expedition in 1805 to 1807, was to 
find the sources of the Mississippi, and of the Arkansas, 
Kansas and Platte rivers. 

Hunt's expedition of 1811 was to found the settlement 
of AstDria at the mouth of the Columbia river. This settle- 
ment was shortly after abandoned by the American interest, 
owing to the war with Great Britain. 

Major S. H. Long's expedition in 1819 and 1820, was up 
the Platte to the Rocky mountains, and back by way of 
the Arkansas river. 



California and the North-ioest Coast. 19 

Schoolcraft and Cass's expeditions iu 1820 and 1832, 
were for the discovery of the sources of the Mississippi, 
and to visit the copper deposits of Lake Superior, 

Fremont's expedition to Oregon and California, in 1843 
and 1844, made a virtual discovery of Great Salt lake, of 
the basin of California, and established that there was no 
principal river flowing into the Pacific besides the Co- 
lumbia. 

The magnificent series of explorations of the United 
States government for a Pacific rail road route across the 
continent, on eight parallels of latitude, were as late as 
1853 and 1854. 

'^o permanent settlements were made by us west of the 
Rocky mountains previous to 1834, being those which were 
commenced in Oregon. 

It was in 1827, that the first American entered Cali- 
fornia across the continent. He was an agent of the 
American Fur Company by the name of Jedidiah S. Smith. 
Finding himself in want, he resorted to misrepresentation, 
so as to secure protection and food from the jealous Span- 
ish settlers. He and his party of forty men were already 
gold hunters rather than fur hunters.^ 

The future of California, its wealth, population and 
prosperity, either under Spaniards or Americans, was as yet 
anticipated or prophesied by no one. Two years before 
the discovery of gold, a writer in the Southern Quarterly 
Beview^ predicts for her a future of the greatest inferiority. 
"Whether California will ever become of any great import- 
ance in the history of the world, or advance to any con- 
spicuous position, agriculturally, commercially, or po- 
litically, is susceptible of the greatest doubt. In itself, it 



* E. Randolph's Address, 1860, San Francisco. 
"" Vol. viir, 1845. 



20 California and the North-west Coast, 

has little prospect beyond a nerveless imbecility." Such 
were the prevailing anticipations only twenty-live years 
since, regarding the destiny of the countries on the shores 
of the Pacific. 

It will always be a theme for v^'onder that by the pro- 
gress of the arts and sciences within this one hundred 
years, the shortest route from Europe to China and Japan, 
to Cathay and India, has been found not in a passage by 
sea to the north of the continent, but by means of steam- 
cars on an iron road, through the territory of a people, not 
then having an independent existence, and now having 
more than five millions of inhabitants west of the Missis- 
sippi. 



LiUKHKY C- CONGRESS 



